On Wed, 5 Nov 2008, Uwe Stöhr wrote:
My experience is that you need the same time to learn Word and LyX. Many
people are using Word and don't known how it works. I get from students
lots of documents where they aren't even able to typeset a caption for an
image. Some also pretends that Word cannot typeset formulas. But of
course Word can do all these things.
What we write in our Intro manual, is a teaser for new users. Someone who
really knows Word won't use LyX because he can do everything also with
Word. (OK, that Word fails with large documents like books and has
problems with footnotes and bibliographies is another point.)
Allow me to disagree. For the record, I've never used Word. I used
WordPerfect (DOS and Linux) for 14 years, then moved to OpenOffice.org and
AbiWord. And I used line-oriented editors such as TDP (Text and Document
Processor) on the HP/3000 minicomputers; did my dissertation in that pig,
too.
While one could argue both ways about doing the same tasks with a word
processor as with LaTeX/LyX, that's not the issue. The word processor unit
for formatting is the line while that of TeX is the paragraph and the page.
TeX also makes micro-adjustments to interletter spaces (kerning) and uses
typographic conventions when setting diphongs and other multiletter
combinations.
The appearance of the typeset page is quite different to the educated eye.
It may appear subtle at first, but looking at a typeset document is much
different from looking at a word processed document. I've seen commercial
trade books produced from a word processed document and they are noticably
more difficult to read.
Do the test yourself. Type a full page or two in a text editor, then
import it in Wurd or another word processor and print it. Do the same text
with LyX and look at that output side-by-side with the word processed
document. Use the same typeface and font for both pages. You'll readily see
the differences.
Rich
--
Richard B. Shepard, Ph.D. | Integrity Credibility
Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc. | Innovation
<http://www.appl-ecosys.com> Voice: 503-667-4517 Fax: 503-667-8863
